A paper-based backup solution (not as stupid as it sounds)

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If you’re holding off on buying a new hard drive until prices return to normal, here’s an idea: If you have a ream of A4/Letter paper and a high-resolution printer, an open-source Windows application lets you store up to 500KB — half a megabyte! — per side of paper.

Called PaperBack, the app is basically a way of turning any file on your computer into a giant bitmap of data matrices — square barcodes that look similar to QR codes, but without the three “targets” around the edge. Each data matrix stores around 80 bytes of data, and with a 200 DPI printer you can squeeze 2400 matrices onto an A4 page, for a total of around 200 kilobytes. Pump the the DPI to 600 and the storage capacity of a double-sided sheet of paper jumps to 1 megabyte.

PaperBack was created as a joke by Oleh Yuschuk, but rest assured that it actually works. To test it, I took a screenshot of the ExtremeTech website (below) and used PaperBack to print out an encoded version at 200 DPI (above). I then dusted off an old USB scanner, plugged it in, hit the Scan button in PaperBack… and voila! The screenshot was restored to its former glory.

To counter some obvious issues with paper-based storage, such as coffee cup rings, PaperBack also includes error correction by way of redundant data blocks. By default, 1 in 5 data matrices is redundant — meaning, in theory, you could restore the original file even if 20% of the paper has been destroyed. There is also built-in compression that’s optimized for text files, which can cram up to 3 megabytes of data onto a single side of paper.

By now you are probably nodding, smiling — and yet desperately trying to answer a rather valid question: But what’s the point? Surprisingly, there are actually a few valid applications for PaperBack.

Long-term storage, for example: Other than tapes, and sapphire hard disks, there are surprisingly few storage mediums that can stand the test of time — and then, the bigger problem is whether you’ll have the hardware to read that data in 50 or 100 years. Acid-free paper with decent ink can last a hundred years without special storage requirements, and can be hand-decoded by a human if for some reason post-apocalyptic Earth lacks digital scanners.

Because of its minimal storage capacity, though, paper-based storage is likely to have just one sensible use: Storing encryption keys. You have probably experienced a CD or USB stick that has become unreadable — and if that happens to be your private encryption keychain, you’re in trouble. If you have a copy of your private key backed up using PaperBack, however — and stored in a safe, perhaps — then you have nothing (except house fires, floods, and other acts of God) to worry about.

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PaperBack looks more like a huge QR-code sheet of paper.
But QR-code in 3D would have much higher dense in memory capacity.

VirtualMark

How are you going to print in 3d on a 2d surface?

Maventwo

Or stereoscopic can be done with colors in gradient.

VirtualMark

That’s not going to gain any data – you’re going to lose data that way.

seanmft

Why would you lose data by adding colors? Does a B&W photo store more data than a color photo? No. You need extra bits to represent a color range; that necessarily means you can use color to store extra bits.

Simplest solution I can see for this is for incredibly sensitive data. ‘Truecrypt’ a drive with 3 Mbs worth of password characters randomly chosen and keep a print out from ‘PaperBack’ somewhere safe (And laminated!).

This screams Ghost in the Shell all over it. No really, in their sci-fi movies/series you’ll notice a lot of that, plus secure data encrypted with embedded code that prevented unauthorized people from reading it.

some_guy_said

There are plenty of fairly cheap printers that will do up to 1200 dpi.That would give you 1MB per side.

No wonder we hated floppy disks so much. Even a sheet of paper has more storage capacity.

Good backup for encryption passwords, as others have noted.

McNo

Actually, doubling the dpi would give you four times as much storage capacity, meaning you could stor up to 2 MB per page…

If one prints in color, the storage density increases in proportion to the number of distinct colors used.

McNo

I guess the limiting factor when you add different colors would be how many different colors you can print out and scan back in and still recognize as the same distinct color. I suppose you could also use colors that can’t be seen by humans.

This is neat but I don’t see a real life application besides encrypted messages. Plus, who hear cant afford a method of storage above 500KB?There aught to be a joke written about your poor broke a**! Are you that desperate as to back up your information on a piece of paper. One spill and there goes all your data! Also, who hear has a qr scanner and what do you use it for if its not for business?

GatzLoc

A regular scanner and any app could read the data. and as someone just mentioned as dpi gets higher gigs per side is not out of the question.

The avg person doesn’t actually use that much data. If anything, if we get to a point where we have more store than we could ever use this is useful; the avg. consumer is already there, ssds are changing it, and as those trickle down people might ‘care’ about space again, but that will quickly and silently correct itself as well.

There will always be ‘storage hogs’ but for example 64gb on a smartphone. I havn’t known anyone to use more than 8gb even with photos.

That’s it isn’t it? Backup on CD/DVD and one day they’ll be the new floppies.

What’s next, a lump of pulsating brain to upload all my files to ?

Dale Heywood

Actually Harvard Students have managed to store 700Tb of data within 1 gram of DNA…Very stable storage and will last thousands of years!

dnwheeler

This looks almost identical to PaperDisk, which was developed by Cobblestone Software back in 1995. The website is a bit sparse, but I remember doing some tests back around then using software they had available. I seem to remember they could get around 2MB on a single sheet of paper (enough to “back up” a floppy disk).

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n49o7

Somehow this doesn’t seem nearly as efficient as it should.

Can any file not be compressed and then turned into text ? And then compressed again using PaperBack’s special text algorithm ?

Besides, how does PaperBack compare to older data-to-bitmap methods, like the ones used to share songs on image-only boards.

Can we get a recap/feature on this some time ?

Mateus

I’ve been searching for a solution to analog data storage for a while. Paper is a good idea, but it is not that resistent to time. After 50 years, the document gets yellow and full of dark spots. It could last couple decades, but it would corrupt data at some point.

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